Last week, after I was told (on the same day I had to take not one, but TWO finals, mind you), I was full of so much dread and apprehension that my skin was taut with tension and you probably could have bounced a silver dollar off the black cloud hovering above my head. Since then, I've made some plans (like filing for partial unemployment, which I did this morning) and have managed to pull myself mostly together. Mostly.

I'm scared. 40 hours a week is nigh on a disaster for me, paycheck-wise. 32 is almost incomprehensible. The partial UE will help somewhat, hopefully enough to keep my head above water. I just need to keep treading. I plug away at the job websites, but there really isn't much out there that isn't way above my skill sets or impossibly far to travel. I never heard back from the place I actually interviewed with, though. I'm not surprised, though the Engineer is. I kept saying that the likelihood of me getting the very first job I interview for was so slim that I couldn't set my hopes on it. Perhaps that was shooting myself in the foot, but I certainly didn't go into things thinking or acting like it was useless to give it my all. I went in with all barrels loaded; I just missed the target. Or the target missed me, however you wish to look at it.

School's done for the semester, thankfully. I think I managed to pull a B in Abnormal Psych, despite the discovery I had missed one of the exams by accident (and it was the section on schizophrenia, something I could have done with my eyes closed and the book shut). I got a 90 on the final. Moral Choices, I still have no clue as to what I got in that class because the professor does not give us the ability to check our grades throughout the semester like the other classes did. Women in Literature, I think I got a B as well. Given that all three of those were throwaway classes designed to keep my student loans off my back, I'm not incredibly concerned about performance (and lo, does it show), but I'm irritated with myself for doing that to my GPA. Intro to Funeral Service, I got an A (duh) and when I got my final paper back during the last class, the professor had written: This is the best paper I've read all year. THANK YOU! hee.

Next semester starts in late January. Human Anatomy twice a week and Funeral Service Principles, which sounds a lot like Intro to Funeral Service to me. Both are in meatspace, so I'll be hauling ass to campus three times a week, something which does not fill me full of joy and song. A necessary evil.

I've been conscripted by the Engineer and two of our friends into GMing a RPG, something I fought most valiantly. For months, they tortured me because they wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons, but didn't have anyone to run the game. They wanted me to do it, despite the fact I've only ever been a player in any game and hadn't even done that since my ex-husband and I split up nine years ago. I kept telling them no, no, and no. Finally, after waxing rhapsodical about the yesteryears of playing Kult (it was always my favorite game ever), I made the mistake of saying I'd be willing to play it, but alas- the books are out of print!

Cue my birthday and three gaily wrapped presents laid into my hot little hands, which turned out to be the three necessary books to start a proper game. hoom.

I put it off and off and off again, but eventually caved and started writing an adventure for them. I decided to use my old character, Charlie, as the main NPC for right now and wrote her into the history in such a way that some of the others who used to play could easily be inserted if they ever felt the urge to come by for a one shot.

It's interesting picking up a character I'd put so much into, after so long, and seeing what's become of here after all these years. Bill and I had put a lot of work into fleshing her and her story out way back when, but coming back to it is like returning to a previously written character in an actual story. It's weird, I've never revisited something I'd written after quite that much time since first creation. I fell back into her role readily, but it's difficult to play her without having the former surrounding cast there as well.

After only a brief introductory game, where I brought everyone together and set up the bare bones of a storyline, many weeks passed where we did not play. Chalk it up to the general malaise and ennui I was subjecting myself to if you like, but I didn't have the time or energy to put into a game until this past weekend. We played for roughly three hours, much later than the Engineer's normal bedtime generally allows and I'm sure he'll be feeling that when he gets home from work tonight, but it felt...good. We didn't get to quite finish the episode I had constructed, but that's ok. I stopped things at a point where it will fit seamlessly with what I concocted in my head on the drive home from Delaware this afternoon (I'd gone to get cigarettes).

I'm actually kind of nerdishly excited to get the rest of the game going with the seed of the story I've managed to grab onto. It heavily cribs from Caitlin Kiernan's books and cosmology, unabashedly so at that, but her writing fits in so well with the Kult universe that I couldn't resist it. I came home and scribbled notes down in an almost fever, which I'll go back to later and draft into a proper outline. Probably tonight, after I've gone out and deposited my paycheck.

One of the things I never knew before, since I'd never run a game, is how easily it is to go arse over teakettle with the power of how fun it is to just purely torture the PCs. Now I know why Bill was so into this for so long, and still is. Perhaps as the game progresses, I'll write entries for what goes on in the game. Energy permitting, obviously.